On Wednesday, Ford Motor Co. announced two safety recalls. One is a brake line issue involving 343,900 F-150 pickups equipped with the 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6. The other relates to door latches — an obnoxiously familiar headache for the company — and encompasses a whopping 2.15 million vehicles from the 2011-15 model years.

Ford says the affected vehicles may not have had all door latches correctly replaced or replaced at all when repaired by dealerships under safety recalls 15S16 or 16S30 — both of which were done fix faulty equipment that was susceptible to failure in direct sunlight.

Apparently, the thermal threshold of the parts wasn’t all that impressive,and a few doors popped open while vehicles were in motion. While the manufacturer said it was unaware of any injuries related to the incidents, having a door randomly pop open on the motorway is universally undesirable.

Ford is going to take another whack at it.  (Read More…)

Adam writes:

Sajeev,

I have a 1989 Winnebago Class A motorhome that’s built on a Chevy P30 chassis that’s been sitting out on the side of my house basically since I moved to Arizona about 5 years ago. Before I brought it out here I lived in it for about 6 months as a newlywed in a garage on the side of 80-94 in Gary, Indiana; I have no idea how I am still married but that’s beside the point.

(Read More…)